First-Draft Finish Line Ahead

Above: Saturday afternoon’s playlist. Leave it to me to use 1970s-1980s funk bands as a backdrop for drafting a story about 21st-Century teenagers.

This past weekend, I gave some attention to last November’s NaNoWriMo story, tentatively titled PLEASE STAND BY, which has been on hiatus since December 1, 2012. I fell out of love with it somewhere in the middle of November and it was a struggle to get it past 50,000 words, so I was all too happy to shelve it during my end-of-the-year contest and querying hullabaloo. But last week I had this crazy dream where I was keeping all of the characters in a box, like in that “Twilight Zone”-esque “Felicity” episode “Help for the Lovelorn.”

I’m not one to ignore signs from the Universe, so the story and I got reacquainted as The Roommate and I soaked up inspiration in one of my new favorite writing spots on the Kansas State University campus, the Great Room, aka the Harry Potter Room.

Personal photo by Adrianne Russell.

It’s nearly impossible to be unproductive in space like this, although waiting for Dumbledore to show up with the Sorting Hat was a bit distracting.

With the room all to ourselves, I churned out an additional 1,500 words over a couple of hours. I think it’s shaping up nicely.

My niece has been reading the pages in progress and giving feedback. Besides being a built-in focus group, she’s also a writer and her observations have been awesome. She’s blunt yet fair, and doesn’t blow smoke up my butt. When she described my main character as “scandalous”, I knew I was on the right track.

My hands are itching to start revising but I promised to finish the darn thing first. If I give it 1-2 hours a day, I should have the first draft wrapped up by this weekend. Then the slashing and burning can begin.

4 thoughts on “First-Draft Finish Line Ahead”

I’m actually going back to an old project as well, titled The OTHERWORLDLY CHRONICLES, it’s kinda like an epic fantasy with vampires, faeries werewolves and other creatures. I feel out of love with it and just didn’t think I could ever finish writing it but now I’m completely in love with it!